Browsing All Posts filed under »East London«

Once again a long delay since posting. However I am pleased to report that I am taking part in a group exhibition with Sarah-Jane Field and John Umney this coming November. The exhibition will take place at Oxford House in Bethnal Green from 10th until 29th November with a private view from 6 until 8.30 […]

I have continued to work on my Bethnal Green project Private View… with further visits to the V&A Museum of Childhood and York Hall. Both of these venues have interesting histories. The Museum was originally constructed to provide a home for exhibits from the Great Exhibition in 1851. The “Brompton Boilers’ as it was affectionately known opened […]

Have been working up a maquette of a book for the Toynbee Hall Regeneration project. Early days yet – I am less than half way through. I want to open a dialogue with the team at Toynbee Hall on how we might present the work in the long run. Preview is on blurb.com… Regeneration @ToynbeeHall […]

The date for the private view/artist talk for my forthcoming exhibition SOCIAL CHANGE IN TOWER HAMLETS…100 YEARS SINCE CHARLES BOOTH. It is planned for 10th November from 6.00 until 9.30 pm with the artist’s talk at 7.00. All are welcome so please pass on details. For my photographer colleagues its worth noting the the exhibition is part […]

This image from my series Transformation has been selected as one of the winners of the Urban Photofest 2016. It will be screened at the UrbanPhotoFest in early November. Fellow [( 6 )] photographer Tanya Ahmad was also named as one of the winners. Well done to her!!

After a fair amount of discussion with both Oxford House and New Policy Institute we have agreed to go ahead with the proposed exhibition. It will run at Oxford House from 10th November to 7th December 2016. We hope to organise a speaker event rather than a private view and are currently talking to prospective […]

For the last two days I have been at Oxford House in Bethnal Green working with a group based there. The idea was to shoot some video footage of members of the group talking about their views on the social issues raised by Charles Booth’s survey – but in the modern context. The final version […]

In the background I have been fitting in some more photography of East London and the transformation taking place through redevelopment. My tentative artists statement for this work is set out below: I now have 14 images that I have reasonably comfortable with although this is not a final edit. I have more work to do […]

I spent some time last month working with the team at Toynbee Hall. The plan was that we would jointly publish a blog which will be used to keep all stakeholders informed about the regeneration process at Toynbee Hall. I will be providing the photographs and writing the texts will be a joint effort. At the end the idea […]

I processed the images in my previous post very quickly to get a feel for the way in which the pinhole images might look. Too quickly with hindsight and I have since explored the nature of the processing more thoroughly with reference to Charles Marville’s photographic prints of Paris. The first set of images were’t […]

I have now received back my first batch of pinhole photographs of redevelopment activity around Shoreditch/Spitalfields. The reference to ‘transformations’ in the title of this post has, at least, two meanings. In the first instance the subject matter itself is concerned with the physical transformation of the urban environment. On another level it also refers to […]

I have not been actively making images for my project looking at the gentrification of Spitalfields and Shoreditch in East London. BUT I have been thinking… The latest set of images I produced is here. They are straight colour images of the changes taking place. Following Marville’s lead (in his documentation of Haussmann’s tranformation of Paris) […]

The dust has now settled on the Lifting the Curtain Exhibition and I thought it would be a good idea to record my reflections on the experience. In summary it was an exciting and very worthwhile experience. I had the opportunity to show my work in a lovely gallery that was also a place highly […]

I have been out in the field working on images for After Marville… I have been focusing on locations where new developments have recently been completed or where work is in progress or where planning applications have been made for new developments (and often the demolition of pre-existing properties. I have put the work into a […]

As has often been the case when I start a new project I begin in one place and then move on. My starting point for looking at the redevelopment of East London was to a fair degree focussed on how the means of presentation could add layers of meaning to the photographs I produce. Specifically, […]

John Umney raised concerns in his comments on my previous post that the archaic form of processing invited the viewer to look back on the past with nostalgia and to consider the new as necessarily bad (paraphrasing here so forgive me John if I got this wrong). Subconsciously this issue must have been bothering me […]

I have decided to rename my project, which is exploring redevelopment/gentrification in the East London districts of Shoreditch, Spitalfields and Whitechapel, After Marville… The previous name Blueprint presumed the use of cyanotype as the means of printing the work. At this stage it seems much more appropriate to leave things open. My tentative version one artist’s […]

I had the opportunity to present ‘Lifting the Curtain’ to a Study Group of OCA students on the final Saturday of the exhibition. Great experience. Here is group leader Rob’s report on WeareOCA: The East London Photography Festival, Photomonth is still going on. Lots more to see.

I have been researching influences for my project about the redevelopment of East London. In doing so I came across the French 19th century photographer Charles Marville. Marville documented the transformation of the centre of Paris under Haussmann. The first major urban renewal project in Paris started in the1850s. Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III, the nephew of […]

In my last post I presented a few photographs taken around the Bishopsgate/Spitalfields area of East London. They showed how high rise development linked to the City of London is moving North and East. The development is both private housing (expensive apartments) and office space. There is a evidence that this trend is continuing. Toynbee […]

Blueprint is my codename for a new project which looks at the redevelopment of East London. For now I have decided to focus on the area around Spitalfields/Whitechapel. These districts border onto the City which in encroaching more and more into the space that was once East London. Talking to many locals who visited the […]